A child left unprotected State Rep. Justin Harris and his wife adopted a young girl through the state Department of Human Services. How did she, six months later, end up in the care of a man who sexually abused her? BY BENJAMIN HARDY
O
n April 4, 2014, a 38-year-old resident of Bella Vista named Eric Cameron Francis was arrested by the Arkansas State Police for the rape of a 6-year-old girl in what the police said was his temporary care. Sexual crimes against children always attract a certain horrified attention, but this particular case earned additional scrutiny because Francis had recently worked as head teacher at a Christian preschool in West Fork owned by state Rep. Justin Harris (R-West Fork) and his wife, Marsha. Harris, who said he was “devastated and sickened” by news of the abuse, told the Arkansas Times in April 2014 that Francis had been in his employ only about three months, from November 2013 to 14
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ARKANSAS TIMES
January 2014, before being fired for poor work attendance. “He came with a pristine record,” Harris said at the time, noting that Francis was also a youth pastor at a church and had worked previously in early childhood education for the Bentonville School District and with a Head Start program. Harris added that he was confident nothing had happened to any of the children at Growing God’s Kingdom Preschool, because of strict security protocols (the classroom contains a continuously operating camera that generates a permanent record). Indeed, no further charges against Francis resulted from subsequent State Police interviews of families at the preschool, although investigators uncovered at least
two other incidents of sexual abuse of children in the community outside of the school. In November, he was sentenced to 40 years in prison on a negotiated plea. What Harris did not publicly disclose last spring, however, is how Francis came into contact with the 6-year-old victim. In prosecutor documents recently obtained by the Arkansas Times, state police investigators and multiple witnesses concur that the child was in fact the legally adopted daughter of Justin and Marsha Harris. The Harrises had adopted the girl and her 3-year-old sister through the Arkansas Department of Human Services (DHS). The couple also has three biological sons who are older than the girls. Pictures of the girls appeared on Justin Harris’
social media accounts in early 2013 (the images have since been deleted), and Harris announced on Twitter and Facebook on March 6, 2013, that the couple had officially adopted the girls. Because DHS adoptions require an in-home trial period of at least six months prior to papers being signed, the girls likely entered the home no later than September 2012. And then, something evidently went amiss in the household. For unknown reasons, about six months after the adoption was finalized, the Harrises sent the two girls to live with Eric Francis and his family in Bella Vista. According to an Arkansas State Police investigative report prepared by Sgt. Kimberly A. Warren dated April 3, 2014, she
BRIAN CHILSON
HARRIS: Refused to confirm that he rehomed his adoptive children with another family.